Are we still doing this? Okay!
I'm not surprised that you're so practiced at excusing yourself.
It's good to know you come at all of this with such an unbiased eye. ^_^
However, along with claiming that it's all someone else's fault because you meant to be funny
What 'it' are we talking about here? Did I blame someone else for having made a joke? That seems like a weird thing to assert. Maybe you're talking about the shit that followed, where everybody acted like dicks?
bear no responsibility for hurting or angering others
If I finish reading your post and am so overcome with trauma because your ridicule reminds me of my abusive father that I spiral off into depression, are you responsible for my pain and suffering? I've certainly brought it up in the past in conversations you were a part of. Or does the fact you didn't mention it specifically get you off the hook?
More on point, your assumption is baseless. The problem here is that you seem to think I'm responsible for shoving somebody to the ground, while I think I'm responsible for bumping into somebody on the street because I wasn't paying attention. It happens. Your problem here seems to be that when they turned to shout obscenities at me I responded by treating them like they're being an irrational asshole, instead of being contrite and apologizing. There's plenty of responsibility to go around.
are supported by someone (@Ganymede) who people actually respect
Yeah, the way she weighed in after everything else totally influenced my responses to everyone except that last post by sophia. You're a true detective to have ferreted out my ability to time travel.
and weren't specifically told that you shouldn't say dickish things about other people's terminal disease
If you're not too busy drowning in your own sanctimonious bullshit, you might pick up on the fact that I don't see it as dickish, so your point is pretty moot. I wasn't being malicious, I wasn't making fun of him, or him having cancer, or any of the shit that would have moved it from maybe being in poor taste into the realm of being dickish.
The joke used an absurd speculation about his condition, which he's made entirely public, to comment on something entirely unrelated to his condition. The joke was that it would take some kind of medical impossibility for me to agree with Usekh, because we don't really get along or agree on virtually anything. Now that's a dickish thing to say, but one totally unrelated to his condition, and not what you're accusing me of being a dick about.
My own experience with people with terminal diseases, including cancer patients, has been that they don't want to be treated like delicate flowers by the people they socialize with, or for people to be too afraid of offending them to speak normally. Specifically including shit like making offhand jokes. @Usekh and I may not get along, but we're part of the same social community, so I treated him the same way I'd treat anyone else. Better, really, since we've certainly not shied away from digging directly at each others problems in the past. But no, my experience is that as long as a joke isn't being deliberately cruel or nasty, I shouldn't assume any feelings are going to get hurt just for bringing it up.
If that's not the case with @Usekh, if he feels that jokes involving cancer and him in the same breath are unacceptable, that's fine. But no, I don't feel as if I've comitted some grave crime against humanity for not assuming that's the case by default. He's made his preference known, I won't do it again, and that'd be the end of it. Or it would if people like @BetterJudgment didn't feel the need to engage in chest beating righteous-offs with me, I guess.
you forgot to assert that it is all O.K. because you've said worse things in the past.
Damn, son, do you even read the things you shake your fists at and cry angry tears of bitter rage about? I brought up having said way worse shit in the past in my first or second reply. Not to assert that it's all O.K., mind, just to point out how ridiculous it is to pretend like an offhand joke with no malice behind it was 'new depths' for me or anybody else here.
However, you did drive your defense home by forcefully stating that your anger at what others say to you is righteous, while their anger at what you say to them is petty and unjustified.
Yeah, totally. Especially that part where I said to @silentsophia that everybody, myself included, was being assholes in the aftermath. For the sake of clarity, I don't think it's petty and unjustified so much as wildly overreactive.
So... are we going to keep going? I'll mark off a block of time later today to write another post if you're determined to hear more. You think I did something wrong, I don't, blah blah blah. Neither of us is going to convince the other of anything, so we could always just leave it there? If you really want the last word you could even just post '@HelloRaptor is an asshole.' or some overwrought version of the same that doesn't involve another poor attempt at snarky insight, and I won't even reply. Or you could just not reply to this, I guess, but what are the odds?
Yes, yes, irony, hypocrisy, I could have just not responded myself, blah blah blah.